Book Count (since 1 January 2012)

Book Count (since 1 January 2014): 30

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Possession by AS Byatt

This is another from the '10 Books to Read Before You Die' talk. At one point I was pretty sure I wouldn't live long enough. It is an excellently written novel and is incredibly clever, but not very easy to read. At times in fact, it was a real struggle. The plot follows two scholars who each study a different nineteenth century poet and who work together to investigate a possible romantic connection between the two poets, starting with previously undiscovered letters between them. There are all sorts of fantastic sub-plots and wonderfully expressive language which makes for a very powerful novel, but not a very accessible one. A S Byatt has included a lot of poems in this novel, which are all excellent but again, not always very readable. I definitely agree that this book should be read before you die, but don't expect any escapism here. I got the feeling throughout reading this book that I was missing an awful lot of intellectual references and subtleties, which would no doubt make this a more rewarding read but would you would need to put a lot of time into it to access that extra level of meaning. And you would need your dictionary.

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